Working From Home — What Made Us Put WFH on a Pedestal?
Remote work to the extent we experience it now started as an emergency measure during COVID to keep organizations going. Over time, something interesting happened: a tool to meet an emergency has morphed into a litmus test for whether an organization is a good employer in a (new) normal situation.
Working from home (WFH) has become a prominent topic. There is even an entire research institute aptly called WFH Research. Depending on who you ask, the explosion of WFH has been hailed as a liberating force or as the beginning of the end. The fact is some form of WFH is here to stay.
As a result, U.S. employers are planning for a hybrid model with two days worked from home. On average, there is a gap between what employers offer and what employees want measured by the level of WFH either side desires.[1] I believe the focus on the number of days we should or could work from home is not going to answer the fundamental question of how to get it right. For starters, let’s have a reality check about WFH.
Working from Home — Does it Work?
First, for most people WFH is an academic question anyway. For example, in the United States, over 66% of jobs cannot be done from home.[2] The desire for WFH is not about efficiency, whatever we read about the question whether people are more productive sitting in their home office (if they even have one). People say they were more productive when working from home but now that the data are coming in, on average that does not seem to be the case.[3] Full disclosure, different studies show different results. My point is, the question about increased productivity seems less clear cut than many previously thought.
Regardless of your personal belief about WFH increasing productivity, the majority of employees across the globe say something else when asked about the advantages of WFH. It is far more varied and if you want to make WFH work do not haggle over the number of WFH days — not as a manager nor as an employee.
Advantages of Working On Site
When given various choices, employees across the globe mostly listed the following:
· Socializing with co-workers (62%)
If there is one emerging pattern it is the desire for social interaction — even with the manager — which makes on site work attractive. This human desire for social interaction became even more pronounced when researchers asked where people work when not on site. Well over 50% of men responded they worked either in a public or co-working space, or a friend’s/family member’s home. Less than 35% of women worked not at home of their WFH days which makes me wonder whether that is another symptom of women taking on more of the household and family chores on average.[5] That’s a blog entry for another day.
Advantages of Working from Home
On the flipside, the benefits of WFH probably fall into two categories: monetary or time savings and more control. Based on the same global survey about WFH, here is what workers identified as advantages of WFH:
· No commute (60%)
There is much less about productivity and/or efficiency here and it would be interesting to know about what advantages people really see in fewer meetings and individual quiet time when you dig deeper. Of course, you can argue time saved commuting increases productivity but we cannot be certain how many respondents used their previous commute time to work as opposed to sleeping in, taking more time having breakfast, etc. Similarly, saving money because people do not commute does not necessarily translate into increased productivity either.
Then there are the soft factors. Even before COVID and all the increasing talk about burnout and the importance of making sure workers are “happy”, we have known about a direct correlation between happiness at work and productivity.[6] It is a fair point to make that less commuting reduced stress and allows people to spend time gained with more satisfying activities. That should increase happiness and may result in better health and other positive side effects from which employers also benefit.
However, we cannot look at employees isolated from their organization. Just ask yourself to what degree the level of toxicity really decreases when people work from home with a manager from hell?
My conclusion is, managers and employees of organizations that struggle with making WFH work need to stop counting days and look beneath the surface. To me, two questions jump out: First, what exactly makes people in your organization value flexibility? Second, what is it they want to control?
What’s So Great About Flexibility?
Let’s get the inconvenient fact out there first. For some, the value of WFH lies in being able to pretend work. However, these people found ways to pretend work before WFH was even a thing. Now, they have fewer hurdles and more opportunities because that “busy” icon on Microsoft Teams is just one click away.
Obviously, most people enjoy WFH for different reasons than slacking off. For example, anyone who raises children and works whether as a single parent or as a dual career couple knows flexibility can make or break your family’s day. There are plenty of additional reasons that make flexibility at work a game changer for our lives. Think of aging parents, a partner or relative with health issues, your own health issues and on occasion trivial things like a dinner invitation, etc.
It would be interesting to see some data on which organizations do not believe these are legitimate reasons. Let’s assume there is brought agreement about granting more flexibility at work for people with legitimate reasons. In what way does WFH make these things easier?
One hypothesis is WFH makes it easier for us to exert control over our time with no one judging. For example, if others don’t see me pick up the kids from school and don’t notice I make up for lost time after regular working hours, taking that break is easier to do. That leads me to another question: what does your fear of judgment say about you and/or your organization?
What Works and What Doesn’t Is Not Only About You
There is a widely circulated story about President Kennedy visiting NASA and meeting a janitor who carried broom. Asked by the President what he was doing, the janitor responded: “I am helping put a man on the moon.” This janitor demonstrated a clear vision of the outcome everyone at NASA was working for at the time.
The challenge for managers is to figure out how WFH will work for their organization’s goals. Employees have the exact same challenge, and both need to be able and willing to compromise. Shifting the focus on results rather than the process is not just a challenge for managers. Thinking your colleagues and/or manager will judge you for stepping out to drive a kid to soccer practice also says a lot about your own belief system. For example, are you projecting your own judgment of people who left early to do the exact the same things?
Finding Out What Works
How can you align your WFH needs with the needs of your organization? One way to start strategizing is to determine whether you work in an environment that has not yet managed to progress from command control to an outcome-oriented culture. Depending on which one it is, you will need to develop a different approach. The initial step could be to make sure you do have a good reason for your request for (more) WFH options. In some cases, the law is on your side. In other cases, you might be a pioneer — think first parent with a baby in a start-up environment.
The next step could be to figure out more about any institutional concerns and come up with a strategy to make them work to your advantage. If your manager is concerned about your performance, you can form a narrative that turns you into a reliable team member regardless of where your desk happens to be.
Our expectation for managers is to communicate clearly and be transparent. Well, how about your own transparency? If you position your desire for WFH as an entitlement or you ask for WFH for WFH’s sake, depending on your organizational culture, you might do more harm than good. I am not saying hybrid work is the root of all evil. On the contrary, smart organizations make an effort to figure out how exactly WFH can improve things for the entire organization. That takes work. It also means there is no cookie cutter solution. That leads the real challenge, i.e. what can we do to figure this out?
How Coaching Can Help You Figure out WFH
Coaching will help you discover more about your organization, your role in that organization and yourself as a person. You can learn ways to see somebody else’s point of view and develop strategies to convey your needs and to align them with your organization’s needs.
Coaching can also be helpful to figure out the deeper desires for your wish to have more control over your time and where you work. Perhaps you are not in an organization that is right for you. The thing is this: not permitting WFH can be a symptom for a lousy organizational culture but it doesn’t have to be. WFH per se does not make your organization one of the best places to work. If managers thought about it and have valid reasons for limited WFH options, then there is no harm in asking them.
If you struggle with WFH as a manager, coaching can lead to insights about the true nature of you concerns. Executive coaches can equally come alongside you to develop clear communication skills about your responsibilities, the responsibilities of your team and how they all play together for the company’s mission.
Think about your organization’s equivalent of sending a man to the moon. What are the steps you as manager can take to ensure your team members will be able to proudly answer the question “What is it you do here?” in case the President should come visiting.
The original article was first published in German on November 13, 2023 on crimalin.com.
[1] Barrero, Jose Maria, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, 2021. “Why working from home will stick,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 28731. Updated September 2023. Barrero (2023)
posted by Peter at 10:31 AM
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